The financial services firm, Standard & Poor’s, threw down a stunning challenge in court claiming that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner threatened the chairman of S&P’s parent company in a phone call that warned of consequences after the downgrade came.

It came just days after S&P angered the White House by downgrading the U.S. credit rating in the middle of the 2011 debt ceiling debate.

Harold McGraw III said, according to the sworn legal declaration, “[Geithner] said that, ‘you have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country.’”

He went to attribute the following threats from Geithner, “S&P’s conduct would be ‘looked at very carefully’ he said. Such behavior could not occur, he said, without a response from the government.”

The Justice Department filed a $5 billion dollar fraud lawsuit about a year ago, accusing S&P of lying about the credit worthiness of complicated financial instruments in the run out to the 2008 financial crisis.

S&P believes the lawsuit is meritless. So is this a case of political retribution? Watch The Kelly File analysis above.